Broadcast on a Beach, please

Another lazy day upon the plush maize sands of Alex, with pristine green waters lapping at the shore. Being at the beach allows me access to an often obscured prism of Muslim and Egyptian life. Life of the families, the children and their parents who have taken refuge by the shore, and the evident love and bonds between them is unparalleled. Unparalleled in regards to the visible degree of affection between parents and their children.

But perhaps it was the contrast to the polar images we are blinded by in the Western media of Muslim life. Particularly considering the fact I had just been in my room, watching BBC World as the CCTV images of the suicide bombers were being shown at Luton, along with other graphics of the tale of the London bombings and those of a Turkish resort yesterday. Stark, grainy and cruel pictures of men in their twenties and thirties. Vacant faces and hollow eyes. This is what we see when we turn on the TV.

At the beach, these same men, Muslim men, Egyptian men who are the comrades and neighbors of "terrorists" and who might as well be terrorists in the eyes of many Americans, you receive a different strain of Middle Eastern stimuli. Watching these grinning men, as they clutched their gleeful young babies prancing in the water, seems to nullify, at least temporarily, all that you'd see on TV. And if you aren't watching grainy passport shots of terrorists, you are seeing chaotic Arab streets, 1983 Vauxhalls transformed into mini incendiary bombs, bodies in a shroud of the Palestinian flag, the heels of women in chadors, markets ridden in filth and hyper-vigilant and detached reporters before them. I'd like to see CNN and Fox News come spend a day at a beach in Alexandria. Broadcast from there. At the beach, a simple setting, you've come to swim, be with your family. Life deconstructed and decontextualized. Under the same sun here as on the South Shore. As sympathetic as the media can claim to be, including many of the left-leaning outlets, they inadvertantly are perpetrating negative perceptions--by way of failing to present positive images. Aside from relaxing, my beach here is uplifting in its ability to provide a glimpse into the happiness in these rare of moments of leisure Egyptians have. They leave the world on the curb and dash to the water. Forget Mubarak. Forget oil. Forget Iraq. Forget pollution. Forget poverty. Forget traffic. Forget terrorism. Forget America. Do we Americans do the same? To an extent. But it's all the more profound here seeing how little these people have and how much they appreciate what they do. With one another.

The below meal is becoming cold. So, I am going to go and eat it, while watching the Tour de France--live, naturally.